I know who yonder tall, gentlemanly person in the black
gloves is. It's a famous leader of fashions from Fifth Avenue."

The detective opened his eyes widely at this, and says he:

"Why, there you miss it again. I think I ought to know 'Slippery Jim,'
who got that fat contract to supply the army with caps, and made half
of them of shoddy."

The chap from the rural districts seemed very much ashamed of himself,
my boy, for doing such a wrong to our admirable and refined Best
Society; but he was bound to try it once more, and so says he, shortly:

"Perhaps you'll tell me that fleshy individual in a black silk vest,
coming this way, an't the British Minister?"

"Wrong again, by thunder!" says the detective; "for all the world knows
that respectable cove to be 'Neutral John,' the celebrated rebel-spy
and blockade-runner."

Indeed, appearances go so entirely by contraries here, that I really
fear, my boy,--I really fear, that many of our veritable great
politicians, diplomatists, and Missouri Delegates, are frequently taken
for unmitigated rogues by blundering amateurs in physiognomy.

It was on Wednesday that the Venerable Gammon being seized with a fresh
and powerful inspiration to confer a new benefaction on his favorite
infant, his country, came post haste from his native Mugsville, and was
quickly blessing the idolatrous populace in front of the Treasury
Buildings with some knowledge of his benevolent scheme for paying the
cost of the War.

"War?" says the Venerable Gammon, fatly,--pronouncing the word as
though he had just invented it for the everlasting benefit of some poor
but virtuous language,--"War costs money, and money costs gold. What we
want is gold, to pay for the money that pays for the war. And where
shall we get that gold?" says the Venerable Gammon, with a smile of
knowing beneficence.

"By reference to a California journal, I find that California and
Nevada contain about twenty columns of gold mines, and that each mine
is worth so many millions that its directors are obliged to levy daily
assessments of Five, Ten, and Twenty-five cents per share, or 'loot,'
in order that the shareholders, in their immense wealth, may not forget
that their distracted country has a decimal currency to be countenanced
and supported. Now I propose," says the Venerable Gammon, magisterially
pulling out his ruffles with his fat thumb and forefinger, "I propose
that the War debt and the board of our Major Generals be